this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2025
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[–] [email protected] 1 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

well at least you’re trying…
but, let’s not equivocate gender and species (sorry furries)…. or race….
but, race and gender are social constructs.
gender was redefined, in a scientific sense, by anthropologists, to reflect sex-attached roles in society, whereas biological sex refers to genitalia….
in humans at large, most cultures have at least two genders, attached to male and female sex. many cultures have more than two genders, and many cultures allow people to be any gender role they choose…
this ambiguity is WHY they needed a term for this other than sex.
like, why would being born male mean you’re only allowed to like things from a particular set. Allowed to like playing in mud and a little fighting… not allowed to play with dolls (which is play socializing and why women are more emotionally intelligent)… boys aren’t supposed to like certain colors, or certain clothes… or music… or have particular mannerisms… or cry….
but these are all rules imposed by society, they’re not inherent to the biological sex.

so where do you draw the line? well, i’d start with: all social constructs you can be what you feel like you are.

race is a much more complicated social construct, given that america switched to race based slavery early on… but, race is completely constructed by society. there’s more genetic variation between african tribes than there is between “races” like caucasian and mongaloid or whatever antique racial term you want to use.
it’s just that we can quickly see a difference in regional adaptations (like skin color or eye shape).
in america, a half black person could act more like white culture or more like black culture and be somewhat accepted in either… in fact, white slave owners would commonly rape their own slaves in order to breed more slaves… and sell of their own children… every american black person (with a lineage here) is part caucasian, and vice versa…
irish, italians, and polish people used to be considered non-white but eventually became accepted as such… largely because you couldn’t immediately see a difference…
and race originally used to mean peoples that spoke different languages… like the spanish race and french race… it’s totally nuts….
race has been made real, as a social construct, but there’s no scientific basis for it….
Speciation begins when two different groups can no longer reproduce and create successful offspring… like say, pubic lice and head lice can reproduce and their offspring can reproduce but their claws aren’t good at grabbing either hair type, so they’re not successful and there’s two different species….
Race isn’t real, gender isn’t real… do what you want and enjoy yourself and just let other people enjoy themselves….
i’m just glad english doesn’t have gendered nouns like “oh a chair is female and a teapot is male”….
another confusing aspect with gender vs sex is the same word meaning different things in different contexts… like female gender vs female sex… but just default to calling people what they prefer and you’ll be fine.
some people will always be unreasonable but just try to be considerate and it’s all good….
oh and if someone insists that their “gender” is something invented like “dr@g0n fuck3r”, they’re a concern troll… (real example, spelled wrong to thwart searches).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 15 hours ago

but, let’s not equivocate gender and species

No. Otherkin are valid. The social construct of species isn't.

Asexual reproduction. Sapiens-Neanderthal hybrids. Tree grafting. Speciation is nonsense with no basis in empirical observation. The only reason it's become an accepted paradigm in the scientific community is that the convenience outweighs the inaccuracy in a lab context. It doesn't when we're talking about otherkin. When we're talking about otherkin, the cost of continuing to believe in the made up nonsense that is species is too high.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 16 hours ago

That's really interesting about lice. I'd be curious how you deal with society trying to protect or enhance specific groups they deemed disadvantaged still, do we eliminate them and remove these labels entirely making then moot?